Lucky Chow

Directed by Bruce Seidel

Lucky Chow

Precedes:

Closing Night Party

March 22, 20159:00 pm

Description

UPDATE: We regret to announce that the Saturday screening of LUCKY CHOW has changed to an encore screening of CHANGING SEASON: ON THE MASUMOTO FARM. This screening will be a regular-priced ticket ($14). We are happy to offer a full refund or if you would like to watch “Changing Season,” we can offer a partial refund for the difference. Please contact our Box Office team at boxoffice@caamedia.org. Unfortunately, we cannot transfer your ticket to the Sunday screening of “Lucky Chow” as it is at rush, but we are working on bringing another screening of “Lucky Chow” in the coming months.

LUCKY CHOW, a six-part PBS series, follows LUCKYRICE culinary festival founder Danielle Chang as she travels across America, exploring the Asian food landscape. Each episode examines a different food theme and features many of the country’s most renowned chefs and culinary stars.

The series begins with the ramen craze that has swept the country and features New Yorker-turned-Japanese ramen chef Ivan Orkin, of the acclaimed Sun Noodles, and ends with Berkeley, CA-based Ramen Shop. In another episode, the two titans of Northern Thai cuisine, Andy Ricker of Pok Pok Thai and Saipin Chutima of the much loved Lotus of Siam, join forces to create their collective version of northern laab, a spicy, tasty drinking delicacy in Chiang Mai. Through the lens of Asian food and drink, LUCKY CHOW explores how Asian culture has impacted our understanding of food and food culture.

As CAAMFest’s Closing Night feature, we’ll be playing three LUCKY CHOW episodes alongside an Asian-inspired curated menu from The New Parkway kitchen. Episodes include:

“Ramen Mania”

Ivan Orkin, the renegade New Yorker-turned-Japanese-ramen-chef, discusses ramen culture in New York versus Tokyo. Chef Nakamura from Sun Noodles explains what makes a great bowl of ramen. Later, seafood purveyor-turned-ramen-chef Yuji Haraguchi creates a New York deli-style version of his broth-less ramen dish, mazemen, using sustainable and typically discarded seafood from a nearby supermarket. The episode ends in Berkeley, Calif. with a tour of the local greenmarket from three former Chez Panisse chefs. After traveling to Japan, they opened a restaurant in the U.S. that serves ramen dishes with their local and personal spin.

“Koreatown U.S.A.”

This episode visits New York and Los Angeles — home to the two largest Korean populations in the United States — to explore what distinguishes each. Both are 24-hour hubs of food and drinking culture. However, New York City’s Koreatown covers just one block, whereas Los Angeles’ Koreatown seems like a city unto itself. At dinner with Lisa Ling and her husband Paul Song, chef Sang Yoon breaks down the basics of Korean cooking. Back in New York, at Saveur Magazine’stest kitchen, Top Chefwinner Kristen Kish, a Seoul-born Korean adoptee, receives her first-ever Korean cooking lesson, a kimchi tutorial, from Korean homemaker and YouTube sensation, Maangchi. The episode ends with a night out at Pocha 32, an export of Korea’s popular “tent” restaurants.

“Northern Thai Cuisine”

Andy Ricker, a carpenter-turned-chef from Portland, Oreg., is known for bringing “authentic” Thai food to America. At a food festival in Las Vegas, Ricker prepares a welcome dinner for the participating chefs at the much-loved Lotus of Siam, with chef/owner Saipin Chutima at the helm. The duo create their collective version of a spicy Issan dish. At the table, Jet Tila rhapsodizes about the days when his family opened America’s first Thai grocery store in Hollywood, Calif., and introduced lemograss, kaffir lime leaves and other ingredients to the American palate. The episode also includes visits to a Thai temple in Los Angeles.